newsflash: kids are different

So, don't know if you know, but kids are different. They are not the same. And boys are different than girls. This is not bad; it is. So it goes and as it goes, Sabrina is different than Lincoln. I love me some Lincoln. He's my boy. So when you have one that you're totally in love with and the second is on the way, you kind of wonder how you're going to deal . . . ? Like will new baby be as cool as old baby? Will you love second baby as much? You know you will, but I don't know, you kind of think about it. But then your little baby blue (eyes - for now or forever?) is born. And you think you must have been insane to think you wouldn't fall instantly in love. Because you do and there is plenty of love to go around. And she just smiles and smiles at you. And you think, "I hope when I'm older and she's a teenager and I say, 'I love you baby blues,' she'll still smile like she does now. I know she won't every time, because I will be an annoying dad, but how about most of the time? Anyway, I miss you guys (which like none of you are guys). I am just busy with aforementioned babies, work (which over the course of the 13 years I've been there is kind of unusual, but over the past year or so is quite common) and school. I am still plugging away on my masters' pre-reqs and it is typically enough work/time to consume what I normally would spend blogging. But I have made this excuse before. Oh well, you know the deal. I'm still here though. And occasionally here.

2-liters of pop

For when you have 5 minutes to pour yourself a beverage.

my new jersey

I need this here to put somewhere else. Know what I mean? Anyway, only like 4% of my good ship reader will get this.

Family Hedge Trimming Power Rankings

As measured by the number of times each member has rendered extension cord inoperable cutting with said hedge trimmers.

theMomica	1
Roger	1
Lincoln	0

Tie breaker was that Monica tripped the breaker and I lost power in the midst of a hilarious facebook comment.

Happy Birthday Roger! World's Best at Everything

(Or, what you get when you make me buy my own ice cream cake.)

tiny moustache

I am wearing a tiny moustache (why do I think there is an o in moustache?) on the corner of my lip. You see, my m(o)ustache hair is blonde and that makes it tough to shave. Not that my hair rips the blades of my razor to shreds or anything like that, but instead since it's so pale, I have a hard time seeing if I missed a spot. Once the shaving cream has been moved, I can't really tell where else to shave.

Post-shaving I will often find myself sporting a tiny, tiny mustache on the corner or my upper lip. On the scale of world problems, this has got to be top 10 - I'm guessing somewhere near the Greek financial crisis (can't you people sell more gyros??!).

So, I am busy with baby. That's a good band/movie name right there. Busy with Baby. Feel free to use it when you start you nice alt-rock band. When that happens, be sure to sell you mp3 albums for 3 bucks. This, to me, is the sweet-spot price for new, promising music. If you're "unique ear" approved, then you may charge up to 5 dollars. But anything more than that is usury!

That is all.

i thought everyone knew

Being drunk is the gateway to liking the taste of alcohol. If it's the other way around, that's when you run the risk of having a real problem.

you know what's fun?

Eating millions of tiny candy bars.

they shoot blogs, don't they?

Not when you neglect them. Only when they have rabies. And so far, no foaming at the mouth in these parts.

So, I am going to Vegas in a few short hours. Wish me luck. Actually, wish me money. You could say I'd be "lucky" not to get hit by the monorail. So, I want you to wish money for me. Go.

I had planned on trying to stay up late in order to make it easy to sleep on the plane tomorrow. I can plane sleep, but let's not kid, it's not like a California King resting on a cloud in a breezy 68-degree room. It's more like, some dude's elbow is in your side and and maybe has halitosis. He does, not his elbow. I can catch some Zs, but then some yutz is asking me if I'd like a soft drink. Oh, and I'm not accepting anything. We're flying not Southwest so I know all the flight crew moonlight as grifters and pick-pockets. (How does spellcheck not know what a grifter is? Has no one seen Paper Moon? WTF?)

At any rate, I thought I'd check in so you'd know I didn't suddenly become famous. Although, I am going to Vegas. I might end up with a variety show or some such. These things happen, people.

blogger can not tell time

So I spent HOURS on a post that's supposed to post automagically at 12:03 am on July 22nd. Well, that time is now, at least EST. But maybe blogger is not on the same schedule. I would assume it's timezone specific as it seems like my post times are normally correct. Hmmm.

At any rate, it's pretty hilarious and I reveal the true depths of my dorkiness. I would only do that for you. So, come back on the 3rd minute of every hour until the post shows up. Now only will you get the post, but I will also award you 5,000 bonus points.

Happy refreshing.

while real Maria cavorts in Austria . . .

Bizarro Maria is unable to keep LeBron in Cleveland.



Sorry Canadians, inside joke. But rest assured, the chick on the right really looks like Maria.

last night I had a dream and you were in it and Justin Beiber was in my dream

And he was giving me advice on home improvement projects. He was saying if you're going to remodel, you should plan everything out and buy all your stuff at once. He implied that you'd save money that way, but I think you're really only saving yourself multiple, increasingly annoying, trips to Home Depot.

It's strange that he made it into my dream. I couldn't hum a bar to a single Beiber ballad and right now, I'm too lazy to look up his name to make sure he's a beiber and not a bieber (or something else for that matter). Although, I have spent a lot of time trying to guess what kind of forehead tatt he might be hiding underneath his hair. Swastika seems kind of unlikely. You know how the kids don't pay attention to the history. Mickey Mouse? Is he a Disney kid? See, I don't even know. Maybe he's really like 87-years old and he's hiding his wrinkles. Who knows? No, for serious, who knows? I want his secrets revealed on my blog!

That is all. I promise to post more and this time maybe I'm not lying. But it's likely that I am. So there. Loves!

it's f#ing punch BUGGY!

And Stevie Wonder knows it's bullshit that he's calling punch buggy on a touring egg or whatever the f#ck Volksvaggon is making these days. I mean, the novelty of the game is that THERE AREN'T THAT MANY BUGGIES! There are too many just regular Volkswagens. I mean, you don't play punch red car because they are so numerous so as to be tedious. And imagine the bruising. It's supposed to be fun not sadistic.

Anyway, I feel very strongly about this.

apparently my parents think my knowledge of the Civil War is lacking

This despite naming our son after the President who led us through the mess. Geez. No, great gift. It's the Shelby Foote series. I enjoyed him in the Ken Burns' documentary. In his forward to the series of books, he said he was originally commissioned to write a SHORT account of the Civil War. Not even the long-lost Wordperfect's great "make it fit" feature could fix that overshoot.

Paul Krugman looks suspiciously like he has 6 fingers on his right hand.

before there were blogs, I'd write letters to my friends about their band

Staff Infection
Cleveland, OH

Dear Staff Infection,

I have purchased your new album Simplify and Amplify (or Si/Am – plify as I like to call it). I’ve listened to and enjoyed your album a number of times. And I congratulate you on your work. I also have a few observations:

1.Overuse of the word cool.
The word “cool” is used no fewer than 10 times. A quick look at my thesaurus reveals the following synonyms: marvelous, dandy, divine, glorious, groovy, hunky-dory, keen, nifty, sensational, swell. Take for instance, this substitution: “who were there but his dandy friends” for “who were there but his cool friends.” I think nifty really puts that lyric over the top.

2.Manifold Influences.
Your bass solos remind me eerily of Violent Femmes, while your hard-drivin’ guitar-style stylings remind me of Husker Dü. YET, no songs remind me of the Pixies OR Bad Religion. Some drum parts remind me of MXPX – much to my chagrin. A lot of the singing reminds me of the obscure West Side band, Florie Dories and the famous child soloist Little Cousin Jimmy.

3.Sundry.
There was no song about the Ed S./8-Trax break-up. I found this quite disappointing. Those of us familiar with the unreleased works of 8-Trax/Wooden Bumper/Carnivorous Vegetarians were looking forward to at least a cover of “Breakin’ Up Is Hard To Do” or a rendition of “Say It Ain’t So Nicole.” There is neither a song about monkeys nor a song about NHL ’94 (some possible titles includes: “YAH – B- C GOAL!” “Gotta Take Control” and “Sega Thumb.”) There is no ode to David W. and TP is surprisingly missing from the album’s contents.

All in all, it was a stunning first effort and you’ll do well to continue with this fine work.

Sincerely,



A Fan

miscellany

She was so mean, I ventured she suffered from all three menstrual maladies: PMS, DMS and AMS – pre, during and after.

vending machines

When did vending machine become so accepting of our wrinkled bills?

Remember back in the day when you had to go directly to the treasury and wait in line for freshly-printed ones, singly place them between pages of a "condensced" one-volume version of the Oxford English dictionary and transfer them to your desired vending machine via humidor within Brinks truck. And then, only then, the vending machine would accept your hard-earned cash? Of course, back then everything was 2 bits so you didn't have to worry about dollars so much.

But now you can put a snotty rag in that thing and it'll take it. It's amazing. It doesn't have to be perfectly smooth. You don't have to run your cash over the edge of a sharp corner to "iron" it pre-purchase. This is perhaps on of the most unheralded triumphs of technology in the past 100 years. A more accepting vending machine. It's glorious.

Of course, we wouldn't have this problem if we were more Canadian. We don't have loony and toonies or Lenny and Squiggys or whatever they're called. I'm not sure why. I would welcome a widely-used dollar coin with open palms. But alas, more folks prefer greenbacks and the stoic George Washington staring back at them.

a laundry basket is not a seat

Fortunately, no one was injured by the shrapnel.

Enjoying our pink carpet? There are plenty of interesting decorating choices around here, my friends.

CVS - for all your eye patch needs

I absolutely hate having to pay ATM fees. I am old enough to remember when no ATM anywhere had a fee associated with it, let alone your bank charging you an additional fee for using an "out-of-network" ATM. It is not my fault that the stupid bank doesn't have enough convenient ATM locations. But today, I was kind of stuck. I had concocted a yogurt parfait (fresh fruit + yogurt - is that all that's required of a parfait?) and was going to pay when I realized I might not have enough money to purchase my parfait. I had 4 bucks. The problem with the self-constructed parfait is that the fresh fruit is weigh-paid. I wasn't really sure how much it would cost especially since I had used the larger container (having previously used only the smaller one). There is an office ATM, but it's not part of my inherent banking world (naturally). I could have hid the parfait somewhere in the cafeteria, left, went out into the cold, cold air and walked to a fee-free ATM. I calculated this would take me about 15 minutes. I also knew I would feel guilty if someone discovered my parfait and tossed it - wasteful! I'm also lazy. But man, do I hate ATM fees. Ok, so I'm more lazy/guilty-feeling than a hater of ATM fees. Laziness - the most powerful force in humanity.

Later I had to make a trip to CVS . . . my hands are sand-paper dry. Combine that with winter and my hands are . . . steel-wool dry (?). So I was out of lotion and I need some - and how! Off to the CVS. I also picked-up some Visine for contacts (my contacts have been bugging the crap out of me lately . . . laser eyes, here I come!) where eye spied an eye patch. For serious? People go to CVS for eye patches? "Let's see. Let me fill out my list for CVS: lotion, visine for contacts, eye patch, super glue, rubber chicken, prosthetic leg, cool ranch doritos, zagnuts - 1 bushel, hook." I'm sorry, that was my stock pirate shopping list.